SAISA GIRLS BASKETBALL

We travelled all the way to Dhaka to participate in the SAISA girls basketball tournament. We came back home bringing with us 3rd place bronze medals as well as 2nd place spotsmanship trophy!! Overall my experience with basketball has been very positive. I was able to develop my skills from scratch and also make it to the starting 5 of the team. Our team really came together during the trip its self and this helped us to do well in the games. We were known as the "team that never gives up" which really does describe our team well.

 

Taking a free shot

Seniors

 

Final team picture

Half time

Prize ceremony

Yearbook!

I have been working on the SAISA Girls Volleyball yearbook pages with Sorrel. We are hoping to finish the pages by next week. Yearbook has allowed me to work creatively and improve my skills on Photoshop. I enjoy this CAS because I like to work with photographs and use my creativity to come up with layouts and the compositions of different pages. Being a Visual Arts Student definitely has increased my interest towards this CAS as well. I personally benefit being a part of this CAS as I can possibly (if I want to) apply the skills I learn at yearbook to my photograph studio pieces in Visual Arts.

Working on the SAISA volleyball page on Photoshop

 

SAISA Basketball

I made the travelling team for SAISA Girls Basketball! We will be traveling to Dhaka, Bangladesh, in 2 weeks time. I have shown commitment to this season and been attending all practices and games so far. I have developed my basketball skills and I believe I have shown improvement in this sport. Having to have never played before and making the team is already a big accomplishment for me. I hope that I can develop my skills as much as possible during this short season of basketball so that I can in some way help our team do as well as possible at SAISA. Being a part of the team requires me to work collaborately with others and not play as an indivual but as a team.

Playing a practice game against Gateway, a local school team, in Sri Lanka.

Action Plan for Gecko INC.

What is going on?

Gecko INC has taken responsibility with planning and developing the OSC athletics. There are four different projects that the gecko INC is working on:
1. Improving the OSC athletic uniforms
2. Advertisement and spreading the word to students and parents about on going games so that teams get support.
3. Improving the thursday after school athletics for parents, staff and olders students.
4. Planning the Week Without Walls trip where Gecko INC is actively involved with.

Adding to this we are also planning a trip to the east coast in March joined with the Cricket project that Harshini is working with. Gecko INC is planning on funding some of the supplies as well as visiting interacting with the local children. The sooner we start to organize the trip, the better it will be.

Basketball

Im trying out for SAISA Basketball this year. I have never played this sport before in my life and therefore I am undertaking a new challenge and developing a new skill! The team is getting picked today, if I make the traveling team I can further develop and improve my skills. If I dont, atleast I tried and experienced something new :)

SAISA volleyball tournament in Kathmandu, Nepal

 

The gecko girls volleyball team travelled to Kathmandu to play at SAISA and we came back and brought home with us BRONZE! We were really happy to come third in the tournament as there were over all 10 teams taking part. We really came together as a team and that is what made us win the matches and take home bronze medals. As captain, I fullfilled my rore as well as I possibly could.
Back in Colombo, I was awarded the MVP for volleyball.

Volleyball Captain!

I was able to reach one of my goals that I set in the start of the year which was to reach a leading role in one of the SAISA sport teams of OSC! I was voted the Captain of the girls volleyball team which is a great achievement of which I am very proud of. This role requires me to be a good team leader, communicate well with all team members and have responsibility over team related topics.

The OSC volleyball team has been practicing for 7 weeks now (4 times a week) for the up coming tournament. We have played 3 games against local teams which have been a good way to prepare our selves and get used to game situations.

Our team is traveling to Kathmandu, Nepal, for 4 days to compete at the SAISA tournament on 3rd of October. I am expecting to see our team improve a lot during the tournament. Our goal is to represent our school well and play to our best ability.

Busy Saturday!

My day started off with volleyball practice in the morning. Being a part of the girls volleyball team I am required to attend all practices and be committed to the team. We had a great 2 hour practice where I developed my skills in blocking and spiking.

I promised to help out with supervising our school gym during the Welcome Back BBQ that our school hosted. Sports equipment for table tennis, badminton, volleyball and basketball were available to be used by the people attending the BBQ and so my job was keep an eye on the gym and make sure everything was running smoothly. I enjoyed this job I was signed up for as I could interact with other students and staff memebers.

Later I helped out with the SGA event, “Welcome back to the island party”. Being a part of the SGA committee, I signed up to help with the event. I helped out by collecting money from the attendants as well as by taking photographs of the students enjoying the music at the disco. The photos were later posted on the SGA facebook page.

By helping out with the BBQ and the SGA disco I served the OSC community. Over all the day was busy but I was happy to be a part of the team making the day as successful as it was.

One of the photos I took at the disco

At the SGA event as a photographer

SENIOR YEAR!! Goals for my final year in high school

 

 

Its the beginning of my senior year and I have new goals that I hope to reach:

1. As a service leader for the CAS group Gecko INC stay focused and take responsibility of what the CAS wants to achieve this year. Benefit the OSC community by improving the extra curicular sports that it offers for the staff and adults. We will be undertaking new challanges that come with this new project we will be beginning.

2. Attend atleast 2 SAISAs -volleyball and football, possibly also Basketball. Achieve some sort of leading role in one of these sports.
Having never played basketball before this opportunity for me to try out for the team would allow me to develop a new skill. It would be a good possibility for me to try out something new as basketball is the only sport out of all five that OSC offers (football, volleyball, track and field, swimming and basketball) that I have not practiced before.

3. I was elected as the grade 12.1 SGA representative. This now requires me to stay committed and attend all SGA meetings and events.
"Representatives need to be organized, punctual, and ready to commit not only to your grade, but to your school as well." -OSC

4. I joined the after school activity YEARBOOK, which takes place every wednesday after school. This allows me to be creative as most of my after school activities so far have been sports related. Yearbook will also allow me to develop my skills in editing photos and creating pages on photoshop as well as photography.

All these activities will allow me to get involved with the following learning outcomes: 

• Show perseverance and commitment
• Work collaboratively with others
• Undertake new challenges
• Increase my awareness of my own strengths and areas for growth

Carnival - Face painting

I helped out with the carnival that was held by the SGA by face painting. This experience allowed me to be creative and use my skills to paint paintings and interacts with other students that I had possibly not met before.

Volleyball Pre-season

I signed up for volleyball practices that are starting the monday we come back from April break yay! The sooner we start practices the better, this way the team stays fit and wont lose all skills before the actual volleyball season begins next year.

I enjoy playing volleyball a lot and so I cant wait to get started :)

SAISA football tournament in Dhaka

Team Lady Geckos

SECOND PLACE !! and FIRST PLACE !!
Now we are back from Dhaka and football season has officially ended. It was my first time traveling with an OSC team elsewhere to compete at a SAISA tournament.. and the experience was great! All early practices and exhausting saturday games against the boys team turned out to be all worth it as we made it to the finals and barely lost at the penalty shoot out (by ONE goal) getting us to second place. Our team also won first place for sportsmanship which was an awesome achievement and proof of us playing fair and really coming out and working as a team.
This experience has taught me alot. My football skills have definately improved and team spirit and trust increased. The trip made our team come together even better than it was still back here in Colombo and it definately had an affect on how me played on the field.

Throw in

Mo and I getting ready to play

Posing with our second place price for football and first place price for sportsmanship wohooo

Girls Football Practices

Our team has been practicing 3, sometimes 4 times a week to get ready for the upcoming SAISA tournament in Dhaka. Its time to really work as a team and improve our skills to do well and make OSC proud ;)

GO GECKOS!

At practiceworking on our dribbling skills

Meee

Geckos, AWOSH!

MUN conference

Now its all over!
This experience has been great!
I have learnt so much from being a part of the MUN admin team. Hearing all the debates, seeing how conferences like this are organized, being able to help in organizing has all been a great opportunity for me.

I made new friends and got to know alot of different kind of people during these 3 days.

This experience has definately been very tiring. Not sleeping at all during the whole weekend, baring the pain of heels and struggling with the saree was all worth it in the end.

Experiences like this help me to improve my skills in working in a team with people I have never met before, committment skills and overall has allowed me to introduce my self to debates and bigger events like this.

Gecko INC is back!

The Gecko INC team has begun the Saturday Community Basketball again!

The Gecko INC CAS group had a meeting a week after the WWW trip. Here we decided to continue with the community basketball as it had been such a success last semester (raised over 400 US dollars through community basketball). As we had raised so much money, we have decided to look for another school that we can supply with sports equipment too(instead of just one school).
We had our first session last saturday but only a small amount of people attended due to the short notice . This weekend we are expecting more people to come and play. :)

SAISA football!!

I made this years SAISA girls football team yay!
We have had practices for the past 3 weeks and the team was finalized a couple of days ago. I am very excited for this season!
As being a memeber of the team, I must show commitment and attend all practices. I will also need to show team work as after all, football is a team based game. Through out this season I will be developing new skills in practices, practice games and the tournament.

My goals for this season:

• stay committed
• improve my skills in working in a team
• developing new skillsin football
• stay fit and active!

WEEK WITHOUT WALLS!

Last week we went on WWW to Hambantota. This was a great opportunity for us to get some CAS done.

What we did:

Day 1:
Travel day. Once we reached the hotel we had lunch and afterwards left to go and see the 2 schools we would be doing service work at for the next 2 days. As we were introduced to the schools a day before starting work, we were able to get a better understanding on what exactly we were to do the next couple of days. I found it very good that we did the visit as this made the next day easier to get settled and start working asap. The school was small and showed levels of poverty as there was no proper equipment or technology available. We had time in the evening to set some goals for our selves for the next few days of service work. These were my goals:

• Interact with the local community and get a better understanding on local rural life style and ways.
• Work collaboratively with others to produce a good final product that we could be proud of.
• Represent our school, behave well and show respect to others.
• Stay commited
• Find out how the tsunami has affected the school community (survey=language barrier)

Day 2:
First day of service work at the local school. Once we arrived the children welcomed us with flowers. We spent an hour playing games and getting to know the children and their mothers before starting actual work. I personally really enjoyed this as this was the first time ever for me to actually interact with the local rural community. It was difficult as language acted as a barrier for me to communicate with the locals. We begun working on our set tasks right away after spending a little time with the school community. I begun by drawing out the outlines on the wall from where we could start painting from properly. Together as the mural team we set a goal for the first day which was to finish the two biggest parts of the mural, the tree and the elephant. We were able to reach our goal and even work further on from it which was great, this helped us the next day too as it meant that we would have more time to finish everything else. I enjoyed this day as we worked really well as a team and as painting turned out to be more fun that I expected. I enjoyed the fact that we could be creative while painting as we could come up with new ideas as we went on. We were also able to do some problem solving as we faced problems along the day :D In the evening we again got some time to set goals for the next day of service:

• Tomorrow should be more organized
• Clean up better and try not be as messy
• Spend more time with the children
• Work hard so that we will be able to finish everything on time



Playing with the children of the school on the first day




First day at service

 Day 3: In the morning we yet again had time to play and interact with the children of the school. I was unable to attend this as I had to go paints that had run out the previous day. We begun working on the mural and were able to finish it on time. We were also able to paint the whole wall (above the school sing) which was a great acchievement for our mural team. We were a lot more organized today than the previous day and it helped us to get things done faster, especially cleaning up. Our whole mural teamwas very happy with the outcome.
What we learnt during these two days of service:

• time management
• interacting with small local children. Overcoming the language barrier
• working well in a group as efficiently as possible
• plan well and stay organized
• developed new skills



Before and after



End of Community basketball!! December 10th 2011

We had our last saturday community basketball held the weekend before we went to christmas break. We had organized the tournament to be held that day and that turned out to be a success. This tournament brought people together as athletes played with new people each saturday.  We also were able to make profit which we will use to get the sports equipment with soon.

Tähdets!

Now as the community basketball has come to an end we have really noticed how people enjoyed this CAS and what it offered to the community. Many people have been asking us when does basketball start again and that they cant wait till it does. This proves that this CAS has been a success.

The winning team

Being a part of this CAS has allowed me to improve my skills of working together as a team to pull everything together and make each session a success. As a CAS leader I have developed my overall skills as I have been required to be in charge making sure everything is working right as well as to have control. It has proved to me that I am able to make commitments and be a reliable leader and a team member.